Dori: Teacher union’s greed causing massive deficits for districts

When the teachers union went on strike, and school district after school district started giving teachers gigantic raises at the beginning of this school year, I told you it was not sustainable. I told you that within one to two years, they would not be able to sustain these pay raises. We are now starting to see the results of that.

In Vancouver, WA, they have announced an $11.4 million budget deficit for the coming school year, and they say salary deals with teachers and staff are partly to blame. Now they have to make program and staff cuts in order to cover the deficit.

When they go on strike, they always say, “It’s for the children.” Are the program cuts for the children, too? This is a case where the naked greed of the teachers union is interfering with the education of the kids.

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The Vancouver School District’s announcement is the canary in the coal mine, because this is going to happen in every single school district in the state.

What is the response from the school district? One of the school board members would not even vote for dealing with this budget crisis, because she was afraid it would reflect poorly on the teachers union.

Well, yes.

That is because the teachers union decided they would rather get an unrealistic bump in salary than keep programs that are there for the kids. But she says the problem is that the Legislature is not getting enough money from the taxpayers.

That may be a huge surprise for you, if your property taxes have gone up $1,000 or more in the last year because of schools. You are paying a massive tax increase for these teacher salaries, and it’s still not enough.

Ironically, in some districts, the teachers are actually making more than the average person who lives in their district.

Now the school districts are going to have to do one of two things: Cut programs and staff, or their preferred method, raise our taxes.

So people who are earning less than the teachers are going to have their taxes raised to give more money to the teachers. Does that make any sense at all?

But raising taxes is going to be the rallying cry. The state superintendent of public instruction came on my show and said that we need a capital gains tax (translation: a state income tax, which is unconstitutional) to pay for education.

Even though we’re spending more on taxes — and more on teachers than ever before — he said we need an income tax to sustain those raises.

This was the teachers union royally taking advantage of the taxpayers in this state. They knew it wasn’t sustainable, they knew the raises would lead to budget deficits, and now it’s all starting to come home to roost.

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